Deep thoughts from Dunkin Donuts

Overheard this morning whilst picking up supplies for the trek to connecticut. A very
large woman was in line ahead of me, putting in a rather large order. Now, granted she
could have been ordering for friends / coworkers / family / dogs / whatever. But she was
taking an inordinate interest in choosing boston creme over chocolate iced over jelly
doughnuts. With nothing else to focus on, I engaged in the age old practice of
evesdropping and listened in on the order…
2 dozen donuts
such and such boston cremes, glazed, iced – the whole litany of insulin shock inducing
materials.
But that apparently wasn’t enough cholestrol and salt, so she added on…
1 Sausage egg and cheese croissant
1 Bacon egg and cheese bagel
I guess somewhere along here she decided it would be nice to have something to drink.
But folks have to be careful of their weight remember! So she ordered…
A large french vanilla with 4 equals.
Words fail me.
[Written on Friday morning on the Treo]

Oh oh, I get it, you are observing the contrast between ordering a dozen donuts and ordering Equal for her coffee. Or between being fat and ordering Equal. Or between being fat and ordering donuts.
Somehow the Equal plays into this, though, right?
For the record, I am fat, I eat donuts, and I drink my coffee with Equal. (It dissolves instantly, whereas sugar sinks to the bottom in an unpleasant sludge.)

Equal is frequently the indication that someone is trying to cut down caloric intake into their food. WHen ordering such a vast amount of unhealthy food as she was, I found it boggling that she’d choose to replace sugar with equal (something debateably _LESS_ healthy than sugar – it’s a chemical designes to taste like sugar, as opposed to real sugar). Assuming 1 packet of equal = 1 teaspoon of equal, she’s lopped a whopping 64 calories out of that order.
My point is that if you’re going to really take on the concept of thinking about what you eat,to the point of using a sugar substitute, it’s usually a good idea to take a broader view of your entire diet.
One last tidbit. A Large French Vanilla from DD already is 40 calories, before you even put any sugar into it. Lets say for the record this woman were only drinking her coffee, and were interested in losing a couple pounds by trimming back her caloric intake. It might have made sense to get regular coffee instead of french vanilla, which would have further cut her calories dramatically.
To put it in scale, one glazed donut from Dunkin Donuts is about 180 calories.

I see you’ve raised the ire of the female defensive league, who bristle at any hint of criticism of a female by a male, especially if it has anything to do with her physique. As a male, on the other hand, I understand completely your amusement.
Years ago I was in line to order at an Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips joint. In front of me was a woman. At first she ordered an “original”, which was two wedges of fish, two hush puppies, and chips (british french fries) and a diet drink. Then she changed her order to drop the chips, saying “I’m on a diet.” Then she changed it to drop the hush puppies because “I’m on a diet.” Then she dropped one of the fish wedges.
Finally, having changed her order to one single wedge of fish and a drink, she announced to no one in particular, “I’m being so good sticking to my diet, I’m going to reward myself.” And she added a piece of Pecan Pie.
For those who haven’t had Pecan Pie, it’s a thin layer of pecan nuts on top of a slab of congealed maple syrup on graham cracker crust. It’s a gazillion calories of almost pure sugar. So much for sticking to her diet!

I see you’ve raised the ire of the female defensive league, who bristle at any hint of criticism of a female by a male, especially if it has anything to do with her physique. As a male, on the other hand, I understand completely your amusement.
You know, _THIS_ is not what I said, nor what I even tried to imply. This is not a male / female thing. This is purely a “If you’re going to take an interest in yourself, be active in all you do”. I would have easily said the same thing if it were an overweight man. Heck, an underweight person as well. It doesn’t make a difference. If you’re choosing to make a change in your diet for healthy reasons, do it full scale.
To sapiophile’s point, that Equal is nicer in coffee than Sugar, because it doesn’t sludge up, that may in fact have been her reason, but I find the taste of equal equivelent to coating my tongue with turpentine, but to each their own.

Your story would have been way more compelling (although a dull repetition of this same “amusing” observation made by thousands of others before you) had it been one or two or even three donuts. The fact that she’s ordering dozen makes it clear that she IS, in fact, ordering for others, and you have no reason to believe that one of those donuts would ever have crossed her lips.

Wow, Kermit, you’re a charmer, eh?
It’s a standard observation of people’s idiosyncratic eating styles, which, in this country, are more than a little schizophrenic, and I continue to think that the size of the person behaving this way is completely irrelevant.

I gotta jump on the offended-fat-chick band-wagon, and I felt this way before I read the other comments so I’m really not just backing up my women friends.
This is what tripped me up: Now, granted she
could have been ordering for friends / coworkers / family / dogs / whatever. But she was
taking an inordinate interest in choosing boston creme over chocolate iced over jelly
doughnuts.
I get that your point was the suger juxtaposed with artificial sweetner. And yeah, if she was ordering all of those donuts for herself and then the drink w/ the artificial sweetner for diet’s sake… that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
If that was your point, you really could have just said that. “This lady was ordering a bunch of donuts and THEN, get this, she ordered an iced coffee with artificial sweetner. I don’t get it!”
But instead, what you did was essentially make a fat joke. “A very large woman…”, “But she was
taking an inordinate interest in choosing…” You were definitely intimating that the fat lady was gonna eat all the donuts herself and then went on to make your, seemingly unrelated, point about sugar/artificial sweetener.
Then you said in a follow-up comment that the point could have been made whether it was a fat or a thin lady doing the ordering. So why, then, did you point out that she was “large” AND hint that you thought she was going to eat them all herself?

What’s been amusing me about this thread is that folks are focusing on ‘a very large woman’, and extrapolating my intent from there. The level of knee-jerk reaction here has been fascinating to watch.
I won’t leap to defend all my statements, that’s an argument pattern that won’t really result in anything positive. Suffice to say, as I said already, what was fascinating was the donuts + high caffeine and fat drink + … four equals. This on top of the large donut order was just too much.
No, I don’t expect her to eat all of them. When did I say that? I assume she’s getting them for her office or whatever, but she certainly took a strong interest in their content, so wouldn’t it be a safe assumption some of those were for her? That, with the single high fat, high caffeine, high calorie drink with the Equals, was the point I was trying to make.
Thanks to everyone for their comments. This has been fascinating.

How do you conclude that the responses were “knee jerk” and not thoughtful?
Can you step back a moment and ask yourself: WHY did I feel the inclusion of the woman’s size was relevent and/or amusing enough to include in the story? Instead of giving in to the feeling of being jumped on and thus getting defensive, perhaps you could take a second look at what you wrote and ask yourself: is this indicative of some mixed feelings about large women, that I am using a woman’s size to add to the amusement of my funny post, but then disclaiming that, because size was not the MAIN point of the post?

It’s become quite obvious that people are taking this posting too personally, and reading too far into a bit of whimsy. I won’t delete the post, but I won’t comment further on it. If folks feel compelled to do so, feel free, but I’m done.